Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Chris Ray is sporting an ERA north of 8.00...and that's a problem. Has he lost his fastball? Not really. His average fastball speed is 94 mph which is a couple mph off his 2007 levels but it's still not bad. But he doesn't trust his fastball anymore.

He used to work off his fastball, now not so much. He went from throwing it 72% of the time to throwing it less than half of the time. The slider and, to a greater extent, his change up are far more prominent and the results have not been good.

Why doesn't he believe in his fastball? It seems like he's still getting good horizontal movement but not quite as much movement vertically. Maybe that's the issue? Regardless, it's time for Ray to go to Norfolk to work it out. Matt Albers was better than this.

In your "introduction," you noted that you covered sports for The Evening Sun from 1981 to 1987. I’m sure that if you want to, you will once again be an excellent addition to the Baltimore sports writing dialogue. But be forewarned. This isn’t 1987. Slip up, and you will have to deal with more than a letter to the editor or two. If you take a nap at your typewriter, awaken 20 minutes before a deadline, and rattle off 300 words explaining that Jeremy Guthrie’s “lack of fire” and “mental weakness” are to blame for his recent pitching woes, I will retaliate -- with facts and empiricism.

I don't disagree with many of Trucker's assertions in genereal. But shouldn't we wait until Cowherd writes his first baseball column, Jay?

I think the issue is that we don't have any pitchers capable of going more than 6 innings. Only Jeremy Guthrie would qualify and he has not performed up to expectations. More a function of personnel than managing.

*****

This is pretty cool. The Norfolk Tides are now putting game highlights up on YouTube. Here's the highlights from yesterday's game: